Katrina

• I haven't been able to watch the cable news nets like I did last week, and that's probably a good thing. I saw Olbermann's blistering editorial last night, but I also saw some Barbie who said, after scenes from the Clinton/Bush I press deal, that "there's a lot of criticism in hindsight, and I'm sure the President appreciates the support of his family."

• And both Joe Scarborough and Gerry Geraldo Rivers Rivera originally claimed that private helicopter that crashed was a Coast Guard helicopter which was shot down.

• They can go hide behind uplifting stories of rescue work and rebuilding efforts all they want. This story is gonna bounce, and bounce, and bounce. And just as with the aftermath of Iraq no one seems to notice.

• Senate Energy committee is starting up hearings on price gouging, a feel-good sop to the middle class, apparently unconcerned about dragging Federal officials away at an inoppertune moment. Not so the Collins/Lieberman committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security [sic]. Why is Joementum there every frickin' time you turn around, like he's Peter Sellers in Doctor Strangelove? How did we manage to get a Senate committee where the chair is more liberal than the ranking minority member?

• Mr. Peanut, to Mr. Potato, Sunday morning: "I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'"

For the record, this from the Times-Picayune:

LAKEVIEW LEVEE BREACH THREATENS TO INUNDATE CITY

By Doug MacCash
and James O.Byrne
Staff writers

A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new "hurricane proof" Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown...

emphasis mine. We can't send Mike Brown back to those horse people, because they're smart enough not to want him. But can't we find Chertoff some place out of the way where he can go back to sniffing Clinton's cock?

• And while we're at it, could someone, anyone, please get Babs Bush back into permanent air conditioning somewhere with the staff posted to make sure she doesn't see any more poor people? For the sake of everyone's beautiful mind?

• Ugly rumor I haven't been able to track down: the breech in the flood walls is relieving pressure on the levees, which were probably undermined, and they won't hold the pressure from a refilled Pontchartrain. Or, as Rita Cosby would put it, Lake Pomeranian.

• She didn't really say "Pomeranian", but that's about midway between "Pontchartrain" and what she did say. For cryin' out loud, it's been a week. Maybe next you could take us on a walking tour of Bor-BONE Street. MSNBC has stuck with its slime stirrers on the evening lineup instead of calling up journalists for the duration.

• New Orleans resident Harry Shearer has been tremendous at Arianna's place, following the media. He just asked why they don't follow up on something that's been bothering me: the Corps of Engineers spokesman said on Wednesday they were filling sandbags "as he spoke", but the operation didn't begin until Thursday. In fact, I heard someone make the same claim on Tuesday. Did we not have enough helicopters to do that and the rescue work? If not, where oh where could they be?

• And speaking of New Orleans residents, here's the unfortunately Anonymous in the comments of that blog that Brooks linked to:

In this case "liberalism", or at least the version espoused by Louisiana pols, FAILED those who can't help themselves.

Actually, "effinayright", this poster is a New Orleans native with refugee relatives currently living in his house, and is probably far more aware of the political situation in Louisiana than you. Corruption and cronyism had nothing to do with the DIY approach to evacuation - I defy you to point to a preexisting organized evacuation program in the deep red states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, or Texas that's any better than New Orleans. I defy you to tell me how Bush's cutbacks on federal funding for LA flood protection, or his restructuring of FEMA, all in the name of some bastardized version of conservatism, haven't had disasterous consequences for New Orleans. I'm especially interested to find out what kind of "back-up communications system" could have survived a Cat 4 hurricane and a complete innundation in poisonous muck.

Individual states, whatever their political leadership, lack the resources to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. Always have, always will. I can say from first hand experience that it's the federal government, poorly led by George W. Bush, that's killing my hometown.